Gillam is the beast in Railers 3-2 win over Brampton

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The Worcester Railers headed north to Ontario to take on the Brampton Beast at the CAA Centre Wednesday night for their last road game of the year looking to erase the memories of last weekend’s dreadful offensive output.

It was Worcester that got on the board first as the result of a nice pass from Yanick Turcotte. Austin Block won a puck battle at the end boards near the right wing corner, and was able to get the puck over to Turcotte all alone at the near post. Brampton goaltender Jake Paterson looked to have the angle well covered so Turcotte threw a nice fake and fed a pass out to Dylan Willick in the low left wing circle. Willick’s one-timer beat Paterson clean at 9:38.

The Railers would make it a two goal lead while skating with a two man advantage at 3:13 of the middle period when Tyler Barnes found Nick Sorkin all by himself between the circles. Sorkin one-timed a blast past Paterson and under the crossbar for the power play tally. Mike Cornell had the secondary assist on the play.

Just when it looked like that two goal lead would make it through 40 minutes Brampton tied the game with a power play goal at 18:49 by Erik Bradford, with assists going to Brandon Marino and Michal Moravcik.

The Beast’s 20 shots in the period were the most ever the Railers have surrendered in the frame, and Mitch Gillam’s 19 saves were also a franchise record for the stanza.

In the third period the ice continued to be tilted toward the Worcester end, and with the teams skating four on four former WorSharks forward Daniel Ciampini beat Gillam for an unassisted goal at 10:47 to tie the game 2-2.

It would be Ryan MacKinnon that got Worcester their lead back when he launched a one-timer off a Matty Gaudreau feed at 15:45 for a power play goal. That would prove to be the game winner thanks to Mitch Gillam’s franchise record tying 18 save period and record setting 54 save performance for the game.

The win was Gillam’s 30th for Worcester, which passes Cody Rudkowsky’s 29 for 10th place by himself in Worcester pro hockey history.

After the game the Railers began their ten hour bus trip back to Worcester, where they’ll take on the Adirondack Thunder Friday night at the DCU Center.

For Friday night all Worcester fire, police, and first responders with proper ID will receive up to four free tickets at the DCU Center Box Office the day of the game courtesy of Feeley Dental and Associates and the Railers HC Foundation. Members of the Worcester Fire Department will collect donations upon entry into the game to benefit the Ava Roy Foundation.

GAME NOTES
Scratches for the Railers were Malcolm Gould (14-day IR/lower), Tommy Kelley (14-day IR/upper), Ivan Kosorenkov (Immigration), Kyle McKenzie (14-day IR/upper), David Quenneville (Day to day/upper), and Alex Vanier (Undisclosed injury). Evan Buitenhuis was the back-up goaltender. With Quenneville taking the puck in the face on Saturday the Railers claimed defenseman Alex Adams off waivers from the Maine Mariners, and he made his Railers debut Wednesday wearing uniform #44.

After Kosorenkov’s trip out to California after being recalled to the San Jose Barracuda last month his immigration issues that prevented travel to Canada were supposed to have been taken care of, but apparently that isn’t the case. Hopefully I’ll find out more about that pregame on Friday.

There was an update on Tommy Kelley during the broadcast, and his return is “close”. Eric Lindquist relayed that Kelley said he wanted a few more physical practices before he would get out there for real.

This writer almost made a big goof concerning Wednesday night’s game. The schedule printout taped to my desk, which as of posting time is still available on the Railers site, shows the game as having an 11am start time. Luckily an email to the Railers asking if the game would be broadcast live on NASH Icon set me straight as to the schedule change. The morning game in Brampton, which will be Worcester’s second of the season there, was changed to January 30th.

With it being the first game of the week we’ll take a look at the voting for the “Railers Player of the Week” that takes place over on the Railers Fans Facebook group, and the winner for last week was Connor Doherty. He had a goal last week, but more impressively was the only player that was “even” or better over the last three games. Nick Sorkin and Ryan MacKinnon were the other nominees.